“Roper?” she whispered as they stepped into the alley. “Surely not your lodge manager?”
“We have staff working here too. It could be anyone—including Francois. I don’t want anyone associating you with crime scenes. Let Walker handle the questioning.”
“I’ve never been to a wedding reception before,” she said, thinking aloud rather than fret. “Are we supposed to leave early? Shouldn’t I help clean up?” She was too stunned by everything she’d been through this day to even know if she wanted to return to the party. Up until Sukey’s escape, she’d been having the time of her life.
Monty unlocked the back door to the shop and heaved the blanket on an old desk. “You’ve never been to a reception? Shit. I’m sorry. Did you want to dance more?”
“No, I want my dog back,” she decided, now that she’d had a second to think about it. “I just don’t know how to keep her safe. I hate feeling useless.”
“Make that two of us,” he said in what sounded like frustration. “Walker’s the best at what he does, so I know he’ll talk to Roper and Francois and anyone else who might have been in the kitchen or parking lot. It’s not as if we can do anything more. But I want to.”
“Well, at least Sukey is safe,” she said, hugging herself as she realized that, without the shawl, she was chilled in the cool evening air.
“Now we need to make you safe.” He didn’t sound any less frustrated. “With Kurt gone, I need to be available for the resort staff, which means I need to be where they can find me. But I am not leaving you here alone. Just not happening, so don’t argue with me.”
“I’m nobody,” she insisted. “I don’t matter to anyone. I’ll be fine here.”
The sound he made was so frustrated and angry that Fee glanced up in surprise.
“Dammit to hell, woman.” He glared down at her. “You matter to me.”
And then he hauled her off the floor and kissed her.
Twenty-two
Saturday, night
The whole time Monty had Fee’s perfect lips pressed against his, a stupid song line about Then I kissed her played through his useless brain. His hunger brought up another bit about more and more.
He had song lyrics telling him what to do. And he did it anyway, because her kiss filled him with joy in the same way as the wedding’s glorious music. Fiona’s response was so. . . perfect, as if she might want him just as much as he wanted her.
Hers wasn’t a practiced kiss of seduction, but one of surprise and exploration. The arms she’d curled around herself loosened to lean against him, and she felt so right like that. . . he didn’t think he could ever let her go.
But an intrusive cough reminded him that he’d left the damned door open. Pushing Fee behind him, Monty spun to face the intruder, ready to throttle anyone. . .
Harvey leaned against the jamb, holding one of his carved walking sticks. “I thought Fee might like a better stick. Looks like she might need one to beat off her suitors.”
“Suitors?” Fee said with a laugh from behind him. “Did you just say suitors?”
Her laugh defused Monty’s temper. He still grabbed the stick from Harvey and stood between Fee and the musician. “It’s been a long day, Menendez. Go play with sticks elsewhere.”
“My grandfather was the Menendez,” Harvey said complacently. “I’m not him. Fee, if you don’t need me here, I’ll toddle on.”
Fee stepped up to pry the walking stick from Monty’s grip. “I can’t pay much, and this looks like a collector’s item. Maybe you should find a better buyer.”
“Nope, it’s attuned to you. It all works out eventually. The cake was great, thank you. Welcome to Hillvale.” He saluted and sauntered off, a shadow slipping into the darker shadows.
“Is that supposed to make sense?” she asked, trying to study the stick in the dark.
“It just means you’ve been accepted into the Lucy club. C’mon, we’re going up to my place. Our guests can figure out how to make their own way home.” He was still revved from that kiss and probably not thinking clearly, but he wasn’t leaving Fee here alone.
“I’m trying to make my own home here,” she said in what sounded like frustration.
He understood frustration fine enough. He hadn’t felt like this since adolescence. But he had a notion that sex wasn’t the source of Fee’s lament. “It’s a room you’ve lived in for what, two minutes? It won’t hurt to explore other avenues for a night or two.”
She socked his arm with her meager fist and marched toward the front of the store. So much for the timid woman he’d first noticed on the street. Of course, Fee never really had been timid. She’d just not expressed her feelings—until now.
“Striking is a poor form of communication,” he called after her, winding his way in her path through Aaron’s junk.
“In my case, so is talking,” she called back.
Well, yeah, there was that. “You just need more experience.” He reached the upstairs landing just as she unlocked her door. “I had to practice public and private speaking in school. I can teach you.”
She sent him a look of disbelief he probably deserved. But as usual, she didn’t follow it with words. Instead, she picked up a well-worn purple teddy bear from the bed and cuddled it, burying her nose in its fur. Okay, got it. Maybe. This was her safety zone, and he was disturbing it.
“Just exactly how old are you?” he asked in exasperation, fearing he was lusting after a kid who needed a mama.
“Twenty-five,” she retorted with hostility, dropping the bear and grabbing her back pack. “Get out. Let me change and pack my things.”
Deciding even Fee wasn’t crazy enough to drop from a second-story window to avoid him, Monty backed out. He didn’t have a sympathetic bone in his body, but he figured she was on a precipice, and he wasn’t helping. He couldn’t say clever things like You don’t need any clothes where I’m taking you, even if she was old enough for seduction.
Seducing a Lucy was always a bad idea, as Walker, Keegan, and Kurt had proved. Well, Keegan was a Lucy and maybe didn’t count. The damned Scot didn’t even notice that his wife was a live wire capable of taking down half the internet if she blew a fuse.
Eccentric, slightly unbalanced Lucys needed security, and Monty was fully aware he had none to offer. He didn’t even have an apartment of his own. He definitely wasn’t ready to settle down. And a woman who spent all her time cooking food he shouldn’t be eating would be hell on earth.
So he had to quit kissing her—and looking at those perfect round breasts that begged to be touched. Were her nipples pink? Did she have freckles all over? Not so much on her back, he noticed, so she must not bask in the sun.
Of course she didn’t bask in the sun. She spent all her time trying to please people by cooking in dark smelly kitchens.
He was as irritated with himself as he was with Fee by the time she emerged, wearing jeans and a hoodie and carrying her ratty backpack and the new walking stick. And he still wanted to kiss her.
“There’s something wrong with my head,” he told her as they traipsed back downstairs.
“It’s on your shoulders?” she suggested.
“See, that’s the kind of crack I don’t follow. Shouldn’t my head be on my neck?” He steered her toward the front of the store when she tried to head for the back.
“It’s a figure of speech.” She shot him a look in the dim light from the street lamp through the plate glass. “You have a good head on your shoulders. And this is why I don’t talk. People never understand what I’m saying.”
“Because you don’t talk enough. We could spend the night talking.” Just put a bullet in his head now.
“I need sleep. I have to be at Dinah’s before dawn. How will I get there?” Under the street lamp, she looked like the lost waif he’d first seen, her eyes huge beneath those thick velvet lashes.
“Dawn,” he groaned. “I don’t remember the last time I saw dawn.”
She headed back into the store. He grabbe
d her shoulder and spun her around again. The parking lot was full of cars, and people milled about, drinks in their hands. Music still played from the restaurant. He probably ought to go back to the reception. Fee would run back and lock herself in her room if he did.
“I need to shut things down, but if I go back in there, it will be hours before I can escape again,” he said in annoyance.
She followed his gaze and nodded agreement. “I should see that the food is put away. With the food, music, and liquor shut down, they’ll all go home.”
“But you want to be back here at dawn,” he argued cunningly. He’d always been good at debate.
Of course, he was cutting his own throat here. Going back in that drunken party was not what he wanted right now.
He loved that she actually met his eyes for a change. He was tired of that cast-down look.
“So we spend the next hour shutting down and get up an hour past dawn?” she suggested, all on her own.
“Maybe even Dinah won’t be in by then,” he agreed without agreeing. “She might still be in there, kicking up her heels.”
“Not if it’s all your city people in there, which I’m betting it is. Okay, let’s do this. At least it will feel as if I’m accomplishing something.” Hooking her walking stick on her backpack, she marched toward Delphines.
“Broken,” Monty muttered. “I am definitely broken.” And now there would be zero chance of sex this night.
Feeling an immense sense of satisfaction, Fee turned on the dishwasher and checked the freshly scoured kitchen. The caterer’s van had pulled away just minutes ago. Work had always helped drive away her blues.
It didn’t fix horniness.
Or loneliness. She needed her dog back.
She carried her backpack to the front of the café. Delphines wasn’t her responsibility. Kurt had hired the resort’s maintenance people to handle the larger restaurant, and Monty could oversee them. But she wanted the café ready to serve breakfast in the morning. The bar people had packed up their liquors and fancy mats and left everything spotless.
She saluted the frozen-in-time hippies in the mural, turned the lock in the front door, and walked out, wondering if she could sneak back to her room—if she wanted to sneak back to her room.
Sukey wouldn’t be there. And a ratty teddy bear couldn’t snuggle.
Monty was right, damn him. It was just a room. She’d craved her own place for so long that she’d never quite learned a room simply held possessions.
The mayor—the mayor!—was already on the boardwalk, talking to one of the cleaning crew. She had just had the most mind-altering kiss of her life, and it had to be from a man wearing a Rolex and a gazillion-dollar suit. She had to be out of her mind.
At sight of her, Monty clapped the guy he was talking to on the shoulder and sauntered over to join her. He never hurried. He had a lazy stride and easy smile that looked as if he ambled across a beach without a care in the world.
He also had a focused gaze that could burn holes in carpet. Fee gulped, then boldly took his arm, nudging him toward the parking lot before he tried that kissing maneuver again. It had worked much too well earlier. She couldn’t remember ever being kissed so smoothly and with such hunger that it had resulted in a case of insta-lust. And she wasn’t even sloshed, not now anyway.
A couple of silk-dress women leaning against their car waved drunken farewells. Monty didn’t seem to notice. Fee hoped the women weren’t driving.
“An hour after dawn,” he confirmed grumpily.
“I could bicycle,” she said sweetly.
“Not in my lifetime.” He opened the door to his enormous car and helped her in as if she were one of the silk-clad ladies.
He smelled different. She couldn’t place the scent. Underneath the more obvious odor of lust she caught a whiff of hot sands and ocean breezes—Natural, earthy, welcoming. . . She’d have to work on translating it because it made her feel—horny, safe, and weirdly, loved. She’d never smelled anything quite like it.
“Did you call your mother?” she asked as he took the driver’s seat. She needed to find some reason to disapprove of him.
“I did. She’s fine, bossing around docs. They were taking her in for tests, so I wiggled out of explaining why Kurt didn’t call.”
Damn, the problem here was that she liked the man too much. “Why did you say your head doesn’t work right?” She figured she might as well drive him around the bend the same way she did everyone else.
He started the car but let it idle. “One too many concussions. I barely finished my senior year of college because I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think, couldn’t hold anything in my head. Scared the shit out of me. Some of it went away, but I still can’t hold a phone number in my head long enough to add it to my contact list.”
“Nobody can remember phone numbers that long. We don’t need to, so we’re out of practice.” She leaned back in the sumptuous leather seat as he steered onto the road.
“Like you should practice talking, right. But I used to focus, and now I can’t. My problem, not yours. Your problem is that we don’t have any spare room at the inn, so you get to choose my bed or the sofa bed.”
She snorted with laughter. “I like the way you phrase that. Very discreet. There’s nothing wrong with your brain except half of it is in the wrong part of your anatomy. I’ll take the sofa. You want more, pick up one of those women back there. I’m not in your league. I’m a fast-order cook. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
“Will you stop that?” he shouted, squealing his tires into what must be his own private parking spot at the rear of the lodge. “You baked cakes that had people talking to each other who hadn’t been speaking in decades. You fixed a salad that forced my stubborn, thick-headed mother to see a physician for the first time in a decade. You smell fish on drug dealers! What the hell difference do you see between us except I have a job and you have a vocation?”
Her cakes had people talking? Not a chance. That had been the free-flowing alcohol. “Oooo, fancy words, vocation! I didn’t finish college, so maybe you can explain the difference. Maybe a vocation is where I get to scrub pots, and a job is where you get to sit at a desk?” She knew she was being peevish, but the man couldn’t be that dense. She was essentially homeless. He owned a whole blamed town.
“Nope, not doing this. And it isn’t my fancy college degree that tells me not to feed your beast when you’re looking for trouble. I didn’t receive all my concussions from football. I have a temper and fists I’m learning not to use. You’re a lightweight at temper-raising compared to what I can do to myself.” He opened the car door, leaving Fee to ponder the meaning of life.
Oh, hell, she was too tired to feed any beasts tonight anyway. She pulled her backpack out and followed him up a secluded hedge-lined walkway to one of the resort cabins tucked behind a neat stucco wall. Low lighting lit the walk and the door. Someday, she’d have a home like this. It didn’t need to be large, but she liked the quiet seclusion.
He unlocked the door and gestured her in. “It’s not big, but I’m never here.”
“Quit apologizing, mayor. We all make our own choices, and if you choose a car over a house, that’s your business, not mine.” Fee hauled her backpack into a man cave of black leather furniture and huge-screen TV. He had a galley kitchen behind the couch, with gray granite counters, stainless steel, and white pendant lights. She bet the only food in it was cereal, which he probably ate dry.
The floor was a patterned gray tile. None of that vacuuming nuisance here. Fee could appreciate that. She aimed for the couch, trying to figure how it converted to a bed. She was ready to fall flat on her face with exhaustion now that she’d slowed down. It was big enough not to need folding out.
“I’ll sleep there. You take my bed. Linens are changed regularly just like in all the lodge rooms.” Monty caught her shoulder and steered her toward a doorway off to one side. “You have first dibs on the bathroom.”
His bed was a mile wide bu
t otherwise looked as if it belonged in a fancy hotel room. Piles of pillows, a neutral duvet, a useless throw of contrasting neutral across the bottom. “There’s enough room in that bed for a marching band,” she muttered, aiming for the bathroom. “You like sleeping on a football field?”
“Sleeping isn’t what it’s designed for,” he said with what sounded like a verbal leer.
Mayor Monty had told her things about himself that she bet no one else knew. He was protecting her from villains because he thought it was the right thing to do. He’d slept on a cot to guard her. He was going far beyond the line of duty, and she was behaving like an ungrateful toddler. Why?
To avoid that football-field bed, that’s why. Sam had called him a player. Fee didn’t want to be played. She probably didn’t have a heart to be broken, but did she really want to find out?
“Sleeping is all I’ll be doing,” she told him. “But if you’re as tired as I am, there’s no reason we can’t share an acre of linen.”
She shut the bathroom door between them. Let’s see what he did about that.
Twenty-three
Sunday, early morning
In the dim light from the security lights outside the bedroom window, Fee watched Mayor Monty sleeping. In the bed. Beside her. She’d fallen fast asleep before he had crawled in last night.
She bet he didn’t usually wear that ragged college sweatshirt and sweatpants to bed. They’d been shrunk and worn to a fare-thee-well and parted over his muscled abdomen. He’d kicked off the covers during the night.
He was big and he sprawled. He somehow managed to take up half this huge bed.
She slipped out, knowing it was before dawn and not the time he’d insisted they get up. She wasn’t an innocent. She knew men woke up randy.
It wasn’t that she was resistant to his good looks—or even his player reputation. She was resistant to who he was. The whole town would laugh hysterically if they thought she aspired to a relationship with their golden boy. She needed respect more than she did sex. And that included respect for herself—she was determined to stride toward self-reliance and independence. No more jobs keeping her head down and her mouth shut, she hoped.
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